"The Secret"

I was reading Yahoo's front page when I saw a headline about the new hit self-help book and DVD The Secret coming under attack from critics within the medical community and other walks of life. Here is the article.

For people who have not heard about the book The Secret what it is is a self-help book and DVD as well as a lifestyle that claims if you think positive thoughts about something you want to happen to you or something you want to have then that thing will happen to you or you will receive whatever you have been thinking about. The author of the book, Rhonda Byrne, says that the "law of attraction" is what governs our universe and this is what gives people what they want if they think about it enough. She states that the law of attraction is:

"The law of attraction says that like attracts like, and when you think and feel what you want to attract on the inside, the law will use people, circumstances and events to magnetize what you want to you, and magnetize you to it."

Although the are some pretty comical things about The Secret such as its "law of attraction" claim and one of its main proponents and advocates in the DVD being 5 hours short of a behavioral science degree (you would think you would want someone with a degree in the field advocating for the concept), the whole Secret phenomenon is very sad and troubling.

While I would hope that most people would find the claim that our universe is governed by a "law of attraction" to be ludicrous, judging by the sales figures, coming from the "Oprah (cult) effect", this unfortunately does not seem to be the case. Furthermore, The Secret represents the love of materialism and our desire to place creations before the Creator as well as people's desperate attempts to find happiness, worth, and joy in their lives.

Sadly though, even those within the Church, who are supposed to be the beacon of hope for people, are buying into the Secret's philosophy. The prosperity gospel is preached from the pulpits every Sunday in America. Many popular pastors teach and write almost the exact same concepts that can be found in The Secret except they use Jesus as the giver of prosperity instead of this mythical "law of attraction". In doing so they take the focus on God in the gospel and shift it to be what can He give to man. In doing so they take away hope for people and replace it with temporary material items that become the idols in people's lives. In doing so they avoid necessary topics such as man's sin because they are afraid that people will not like them and that they believe the gospel will be more attractive to outside people. What good is a false gospel to sinners? The glorious gospel of Christ taking on man's sin when He had no sin, satisfying God's wrath, defeating the devil and death and then imputing His righteousness to His people so that they would become the righteousness of God in Him is watered down into nothing more than a get-rich quick formula. The prosperity gospel is no gospel at all.

I pray that we as Christians would re-focus our lives and messages as to what the gospel is and preach nothing else.

"For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified."- 1st Corinthians 2:2

A Little Luther

I came across this quote from Martin Luther while reading The Cross of Christ today. It references 2nd Corinthians 5:21 which is probably my favorite verse in the Bible.

Luther says while writing to a friend in distress over his sin:

"Learn to know Christ and Him crucified. Learn to sing to Him and say, 'Lord Jesus, you are my righteousness, I am your sin. You took on you what was mine; yet set on me what was yours. You became what you were not, that I might become what I was not."

Amen.

Knowing Ourselves

I love this passage from a current book that I am reading:

"And if we fail to recognize within the Scriptures our Master's voice speaking his infallible truth to us from his world to ur world, we destroy ourselves not only epistemically (knowledgably) but also personally, for we abandon the only foundation for the certainty of knowledge and the only "meaning base" by which we may truly know the One infinite, personal God and thereby oursleves as persons of dignity and worth." - Dr. Robert L. Reymond A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith

While this passge is deep I feel that it hits on many issues that are central to the Christian faith such as one's view of Scripture, where we derive knowledge from, and how we as humans are truly able to know oursleves.

First, Reymond points out that by ignoring or not realizing the infallible truth spoken to us by God through the Scripture found in the Bible, we ultimately ruin the foundation on which we derive our knowledge. He argues that since the foundation for all knowledge comes from God by not recognizing his voice through the Scriptures we annihilate our ability to fully understand who God created us to be.

This passage is also important in regards to the overacrhing theme of the passage and the chapter that it is found in and that is what is our view of Scirpture? Do we believe that the Bible is of divine origin? Do we believe that it is infallible and inerrant? I feel that what our stance on Scripture is one of the most important things that we can ever decide in our lives. Personally, I feel that the Bible is the inspirder and inerrant Word of God given by God. There is much Scripture to support this claim (such as Exodus 4 and 7, Jeremiah, 1st Corinthians 2:6-13, and 2nd Timothy 3:16, etc.) which we explored to its fullest extent which radically change one's life.

I pray that we all will know where e come down on Scripture and examine it with other Scripture to see if it contradicts itself (which I believe it does not) and whether it will have authority over our lives (which I hope it does).

John Piper is Bad

For those of you who haven't seen this it is pretty awesome.

Romans 3:24-26

Here are three of my favorite verses:

24 Being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; 25 whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forebearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed; 26 for the demonstration, I say, of His righteousness at the present time, so that He would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. - Romans 3:24-26

There is so much deep biblical truth here most of which I will never fully comprehend. Mainly I just want to comment on how great it is for God to be both just and our justifier. He is holy, but in His great love and mercy, in order to display His glory, He declares us right before Him through faith in Christ. I thank Him everyday and pray that I would be able to better understand the depths of His justification.

A Bigger View of God and Scripture

As I return from a great weekend of fellowship with some of my closest friends and the most faithful people I know I know that God has moved and changed me. There were many good times over the weekend highlighted by great conversations and an hour long prayer session with our area that closed with 'Glory' on Sunday night. This time I believe brought our area of Young Life leaders much closer to one another through the working on the Holy Spirit.

However, I would be remiss not to further examine some of the points of the weekend that I found distressing and in some cases particularly alarming. It seems as though God may have been communicating through another speaker in the weekend when he read 2nd Timothy 4:3-4 which states:

3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, 4 and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths. (NASB).

There seems to be continuing movements that propagate a low view of God and a complete disregard for the authority and inerrancy of Scripture. In this case the analogy of Christ being our bridegroom and the Church being His bride was extremely misrepresented. The claim was that Christ was our groom and each of us individually was His bride. While this point may seem rather trivial it in fact has much larger implications such as a correct view of God and the respect for the authority of the Bible in our lives.

To begin, the argument that we are all individually the Bride of Christ can be easily refuted by a correct rendering of the Scriptures on the matter. For example, the book of Song of Solomon is not written about the relationship of God to the Church, but rather a love relationship between a man and woman. This can be evidenced in the close parallels found mainly in Proverbs 5:15-20, 6:24-29, and 7:6-23.

Second, Scripture cannot be taken and twisted to mean things that we want them to mean. We must study Scripture and then form our lives around what is found in God's Word. One example of Scripture being twisted in order to fit God into the belief held by the speaker was the interpretation of Psalm 139 and specifically verses 17&18. In the Psalm David is describing how the Lord is everywhere and knows everything. Verse 17 & 18 read:

17 How precious also are your thoughts to me, O God! How vast is the sum of them! 18 If I should count them, they would outnumber the sand. When I awake, I am still with You. (NASB).

17 How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! 18 Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I awake, I am still with you. (NIV)

The claim was that God thoughts were constantly about us and that He was watching us sleep in some sort of stalkerish manner. While I do not deny that God can watch us sleep I do not believe that portraying God as a helpless being who sits above obsessing over us is scripturally accurate. The more important point however, is that it is clear from verse 17 that David is talking about how precious God's thoughts are to Him and not How precious David's thoughts and actions are to God. The NIV reads almost exactly the same way so there was surely nothing lost in the translation.

A second piece of Scripture that was vastly twisted was the parable to the costly pearl. It reads in Matthew chapter 13 verses 45&46:

45 Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking fine pearls, 46 and upon finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it. (NASB).

While the correct interpretation of this passage, that the kingdom of heaven should be the most valuable thing in our life and that we should give up everything for it, was mentioned a more dangerous thought and even larger problem was proposed. The idea claimed that we were the pearl and that God had sold everything to gain us. The phrase "flip the Scripture around" was literally uttered from the stage. Once again we cannot do damage to the text to make it fit with our views. If Jesus wanted to say that we were the pearl He would have when He first said it. Scripture points to us being anything but a pearl in saying, "There is none righteous, not even one" (Romans 3:10), and "every intent of the thoughts of man's heart was only evil continually" (Genesis 6:5) and many other verses point to our sinful nature.

Another disturbing point was that God was compared to as a middle-school boy who gets butterflies in His stomach when He is about to talk to us or even approach us. This is troublesome on many levels beginning with the belief that God is insufficient without us. This is simpy not true. God does not need us. He says that He stones could be used to cry out about the Lord (Luke 19:40). Additionally this view of God does not strike fear in anyone seeing that God is made out to be very effeminate and weak. And the belief that if we are individually the bride of Christ, which as stated above we are not, means that everyone will be in a wedding dress it is no wonder why men are not coming to church or stepping up and becoming God-fearing men who will lead the next generation of Christians.

Lastly, the reason why I care about this so much is that a person is put in front of a group of 600 or so leaders of High School students and preaches a very man-centered secondary analogy and believes it is the pinnacle of Scripture interpretation. This is Gnosticism of the secret knowledge form. But becasue he is speaking and in a position of authority it is as though it should be taken as truth. Furthermore many people will not do their own research because they believe that speaker has been responsible and true to the Word. If you are praying that something is not heresy in front of 600 people you should not be teaching it in front of 600 people.

I pray that God may show us truth in all of this and that we may grow in our faith in Him. To Him be the glory in everything.

End of the Year

Crazy how the year goes by so fast. Crazy how two years of college have been completed. It's been a pretty good school year with lots of good times and some hard times as well. I am grateful for those who have been part of my life for this past year. I thank my friends for being the amazing people that they are and being a great encouragement.